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The Spirit Level’ Provided by the author(s) and University College Dublin Library in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title þÿAffluence versus Equality? A critique of Wilkinson and Pickett s book The Spirit Level Authors(s) O'Connell, Michael F. Publication date 2010-09 Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/2475 Downloaded 2021-09-26T14:03:07Z The UCD community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters! (@ucd_oa) © Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. Affluence versus Equality? A Critique of Wilkinson and Pickett’s book ‘The Spirit Level’ Working paper, September 2010 Dr. Michael O’Connell ([email protected]), Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, UCD1, Dublin 4, Ireland Summary The Spirit Level made strong claims that in developed countries, income growth was no longer important and the focus should turn to income differentials within society. Putting affluence before parity and solidarity led to the rise of widespread anxiety, insecurity and social dysfunction. In this paper, six problems are identified with the argument made in the Spirit Level: 1. There is no conflict between wealth and equality. In fact they tend to be highly correlated (i.e. wealthy societies are far more egalitarian than poorer societies); 2. Correlational data are relied upon to imply causal direction; 3. The focus on income inequality ignores the role of savings and state services; 4. There is no evidence that people are systematically stigmatised by buying ‘second-class’ goods; 5. Investment in ‘luxuries’ in wealthy countries have unforeseen consequences in raising living standards in poorer countries, e.g. the mobile phone; 6. The status of women is far more highly associated with a country’s wealth than its level of inequality. 1 The views expressed in this paper are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of UCD or the School of Psychology. 1 The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort … The capitalist process progressively raises the standard of life of the masses: Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942, p. 67. As countries make the transition from low to middle income, most people gradually no longer have to worry about the availability of food, there are improvements in hygiene, and longevity, and health standards increases rapidly. Satisfaction with life is found to grow substantially in these times of rapid change, and education levels for boys and then girls are raised. And with greater literacy, virtuous circles of growth and knowledge, and perhaps even democracy kick in. As Wolf notes, “social progress [including the liquidation of child labour] has been greatest where incomes have risen fastest” (2004). The Equality Case against Affluence But what if there are limits to the connections between economic growth and positive social outcomes? Is there a point at which we just have enough ‘stuff’, and further abundance is wasteful and counter-productive? This is precisely the argument made by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in their 2009 book, entitled ‘The Spirit Level’. The book was extremely well received – “a compass to rebuild our society” (Johann Hari), “brave and imaginative” (Michael Sargent), “deserves the widest possible readership” (Iain Ferguson), “the most important book of the year” (John Crace), and “profoundly important” (Lord Layard). The authors are academics and gather data to resolve a conundrum - despite living at a time of unprecedented human productivity, people are trying to cope with great levels of stress, alienation and unhappiness. Their explanation is that overall income growth is no longer important in developed countries, rather the focus should turn to “income differences within … society” (p. 11). Because of their short-sighted focus on growth over equality/inequality, modern societies have become increasingly dysfunctional. Whereas when countries start to get richer, economic growth is hugely important in raising living standards and combating the diseases of poverty like tuberculosis, cholera and measles, once a 2 good standard of living is attained for the majority, then “countries inevitably reach a level of affluence where ‘diminishing returns’ set in” (p. 10) – further growth contributes less and less, and the diseases of affluence spread. ‘The Spirit Level’ has an explicitly anti-growth message – “we have got close to the end of what economic growth can do for us … economic growth for so long the great engine of progress, has, in the rich countries, largely finished its work” (p. 5). The focus of policy makers now needs to be on the growth of inequality, the cause of “the broken society and the broken economy” (p. 5). “The problems in rich countries are not caused by the society not being rich enough (or even by being too rich) but by the scale of material differences between people within each society being too big” (p. 25). The obsessive pursuit of growth and affluence by policy-makers is matched by the problems of consumerism and ‘affluenza’ among the general public – “consumerism … makes it so much harder to contain economic activity within sustainable levels. Our addiction to shopping and spending makes many people think we have already lost the battle against global warming” (p. 221). Our shopping takes on huge social-psychological significance it is argued, since “second-rate goods are assumed to reflect second-rate people” (p. 30). As noted above, this book made quite an impact. Unlike say the poorly substantiated muddle that is Oliver James’ Affluenza (2007) – a Sunday supplement article puffed into a book, as one reviewer noted - this is a significant work by serious authors with, especially in the case of Wilkinson, a considerable track record of publication and reflection in the area. The authors are absolutely sincere about their approach as a scientific one based on solid data. In fact they tell us in the preface (page ix) that they were originally going to call the book ‘Evidence-based Politics’, (to which we can only respond, thank God for editors). So we can consider ‘The Spirit Level’ as an expert witness called to testify against affluence. And their charge sheet makes for some grim reading. In the race for untrammelled growth in many societies, equality has been neglected. The consequence of putting affluence before parity and solidarity has led to the rise of widespread anxiety, insecurity, evaluation anxiety and self-promotion, while 3 the positives in society have been in decline – community, self-deprecation, modesty and secure social selves. Trust and social capital have declined and women’s social status relative to men’s are under attack. In commodity-rich but precarious contemporary societies, people’s stress levels affect both their mental health levels but also their physical health. Furthermore the inequalities associated with modernity lead people to adopt unhealthy lifestyles that promote obesity and alcoholism, thus further undermining their health. Educational performances fall, teenage pregnancies and family dysfunctions rise, youth crime, public disorder and violence all grow. The authors include a cartoon (p. 214) where the key problem is depicted; by Goddard, the illustration shows three young women speeding in different directions along the High Street in a frenzy of shopping. All three carry huge shopping bags with unsubtle labels like ‘Really ostentatious big bag’ and ‘I obviously shop somewhere really expensive’ and are wearing sunglasses pushed up over their hair. One of the women is shouting down her mobile phone. We are meant to infer that her phone conversation - like her shopping - is entirely frivolous (she’s not ordering a copy of ‘The Spirit Level’ over the phone for instance). This, for the authors is the problem in a nutshell – the returns to society for these ever more flashy consumerist and materialist lifestyles are not widespread satisfaction and solidarity, but all the problems and dysfunctionality noted above. The battle to achieve gender equality, to raise educational standards, to tackle mental and physical health challenges, to create communities that really work, are all undermined, not helped, by economic affluence. And you can add to that the binge-drinking excesses and street violence in so many towns across Europe every weekend. A one-dimensional addiction to the acquisition of goods is destroying our planet’s ecology. You can see why Wilkinson and Pickett are happy to conclude that “almost every modern social and environmental problem – ill-health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison populations – is more likely to occur in a less equal society … [we need] to shift the balance from self-interested ‘consumerism’ to a friendlier and more collaborative society” (from blurb on hardback book cover). 4 The ‘Spirit Level’ Thesis – Some Quibbles But hold on, we need to look more closely at how these conclusions are reached. The first thing is just how weak the evidence provided by Wilkinson and Pickett is. They claim to use their “training in epidemiology” (p. ix) and the methods employed in that discipline to ensure the readers are provided with the best scientific evidence, with observable and objective outcomes, and so on – putting the evidence back in to ‘Evidence-based Politics’. (This is their analogy to ‘Evidence-based medicine’.) The results will not be “some statistical trick done with smoke and mirrors” (p. 23). But in fact they largely confine themselves to using the very simplest method, that of correlation. This is of course a very widely used technique – it is also a very basic one - for example, correlation has just been introduced into the maths syllabus for fifteen year olds in Ireland.
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